The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for detecting the characteristics of an electronic mail message, and more particularly, it relates to an apparatus and a method for detecting an inspection characteristic in an electronic mail message.
Electronic mail has become the dominant communication means for companies and organizations in recent years. However, there is a high probability that messages exchanged by electronic mail (electronic mail messages) contain various types of information that may create risks for organizations. Examples of such risky information are breaches of compliance and moral.
Therefore, techniques for inspecting electronic mail have been proposed, such as JP2002-290469 entitled “Electronic Mail Auditing System and Its Method”. This patent application discloses a technique of sorting electronic mail into at least two kinds according to the compatibility with a search condition formula, indicating the content of the two or more kinds of sorted electronic mail according to the type, and setting the address to a client unit or an external destination computer of the network.
Some characteristics of electronic mail messages upon which a sorting process is based cannot be determined solely from the content of the messages, as taught by JP2002-290469. No known solution addresses this problem, nor has this problem even recognized within any known publication.